A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(31)

It made her look alive.

As time passed, the consensus changed. No ransom was asked for, no new information came to light, and ultimately, despite DI Sadiq’s best efforts, the case had gone cold. It was decided officially that Matilda was either a runaway, or dead, though there was still suspicion on her tight-knit group of friends, whose stories about the night she disappeared were so uniform that they seemed rehearsed. I searched again for anything interesting in the interrogation notes, but Theo and Rupert and Anwen and Sebastian Wallis’s interviews all read the same: Matilda had been fine when they left her. They’d all gone home together and found out she’d disappeared the next morning. Anwen had sobbed through her interrogation, something I couldn’t quite square with the composed girl I’d seen so far. Rupert had called every day asking for updates. And Theo haunted the police station for the weeks up until his flight home, bringing coffee to the detectives, doing his schoolwork in their waiting room. Desperate, it appeared, for answers.

I read through his transcript a second time. A third. I should have walked to the hotel, he’d said, over and over. What kind of boyfriend am I?

He’d never told the police that they had broken up.

(Watson nodded when I pointed it out. “It makes sense,” he said. “Messy breakup, and then your girlfriend goes missing? You’d be their prime suspect.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“This is not me sympathizing with him,” he protested. “Criminal psychology! I’m getting into his head!”)

And though my father’s training taught me to begin with facts and not with theory, I couldn’t help imagining it. Theo, in The Bell and Book with his friends, watching his ex-girlfriend sitting next to another boy. Putting a hand on his shoulder. Stealing sips of his drink. Sebastian? Rupert? A stranger? Them leaving at last call, Matilda splitting off with a wave—and Theo staring after her. Telling the rest that he’d forgotten something at the pub. He’d see them in the morning.

Running after Matilda. Grabbing her by the elbow, wheeling her around. The two of them arguing—I knew the sorts of things this Theo would say, you should know better, and making a fool out of me, and then—

There were many ways for a girl to disappear.

And for his friends, the next day, to circle their wagons, to insist to the police that they walked Theo all the way home. The alternative was unimaginable.

Of course, I had a very precise imagination.

As I flipped through the file once more, looking for anything else I’d missed, DI Sadiq returned. “Thoughts?” she asked. “Questions?”

“Theo Harding,” I said. “He’d split up with Matilda right before she’d disappeared.”

Sadiq sighed. “We did learn that eventually,” she said. “But only weeks later, when speaking to some of the other theater students. When we returned to Theo, he categorically refused it. This is the sort of thing I’d like for you to look into—you’re in a position to earn his trust.”

“Noted,” I said, while Watson made an actual note. “Do you remember anything about George Wilkes? The note here said he was frantic, and despite that, still uncooperative.”

Sadiq frowned. “The girl’s father, yes?” When I nodded, she said, “Parents can be like that when their child is hurt or goes missing, especially ones with money. They treat us like we’re their personal security force. I’d be more upset at the idea if we hadn’t utterly failed him.”

Watson flipped his notebook shut. “You sound pretty upset.”

“I am,” she said, straightening her blazer. To avoid looking at us straight, it seemed. “I don’t like unsolved cases, particularly when it’s a child gone missing.”

I filed that information away. I wasn’t sure if Sadiq had children—she was far too precisely done up for me to read any clues on her clothing, and I disliked looking for such signals on a woman’s body. It wasn’t immediately important. Either way, the moment of vulnerability from her was endearing, and I found myself doing something uncharacteristic: asking for permission. “I’ve taken down George Wilkes’s phone number. I’d like to follow up,” I said. “Perhaps he’s remembered something since last summer. Something his daughter said. Something to help keep this from happening again. Can I use the phone here?”

But Sadiq was already waving me off. “Whatever you need,” she said. “I need to wrap up, get back to my own business. It’s nice to meet you—Charlotte, Jamie.”

“Likewise,” Watson said, shaking her hand, blushing a little the way he did whenever he met an attractive woman.

I called George Wilkes from the telephone on Sadiq’s desk, but he didn’t answer the number listed for his house, or his mobile. On the latter I left a message: “This is Charlotte Holmes, following up from the Thames Valley Police Department. If you could give me a call back at your earliest convenience . . .”

“This isn’t really aboveboard,” Watson said, after I’d hung up and left a note for Sadiq telling her to expect George Wilkes’s call.

“It isn’t?”

Watson scratched the back of his neck. “You’re not a detective. I mean, you are a detective, but you’re making it sound like you work for the police—”